Part 1-Who is Ginz?

Who woulda’ thunk that one day I’d be sitting behind a Nitro poppin’ monster, trying to see the lights go down through the blur of world shaking all around me.

I grew up a New York City kid, raised in midtown Manhattan. I spent a lot more time around subway cars than I did race cars, and most of my friends thought that a car was something you rented to go to the country for the weekend.

So how did I wind up here, racing the most powerful and exciting machines in existence? Let me tell ya, it wasn’t by design or any long-range plan. This was one of those things I never even imagined that I could, or would, actually do. It really has been a very long and slow process that landed me in this seat.

My first taste of racing I did was at the age of 8, in the form of slot cars. There isn’t any real racing in NY City, but there were a few slot racing tracks. I instantly fell in love with it, and actually became quite good before I stopped. I was in high school, and I would travel all over the East Coast racing in the professional classes. Happy Days was a popular show, and the Fonz was all the rage. In school I was pretty much like him (the guy with the hot rod, leather jacket, could fix anything, actually had a gig playing the guitar in a strip joint on the weekends) and I had a "Z" in the middle of my name. It didn’t take long for everybody to start calling me GINZ instead of Ginzburg.

I had enough, and stopped slot racing when I was about to go to college. I was busy with girls, had a drivers license, and the slot car racing scene just didn’t seem too important anymore.

By the time I got to be 17, and old enough to drive a real car I knew just what I wanted. A Shelby Mustang. Lucky for me they were about 10 years old by then and had reached maximum depreciation. I bought my first car, a 66 GT-350 for $1,800. I immediately started taking it out to Raceway Park and running brackets with it. I won quite a few trophies with it too.

Then came a long hiatus from racing. I went to college, and after that got a job back in NYC. Finally, in ’84, I had my fill of snow and cold and headed out to sunny California. I had saved enough to open a recording studio, and so I did. It wasn’t until I sold that business and had some time to fool around that I even started hot rodding again. Basically 11 years since I had stopped racing.

I had built a few hot rods, when the first nostalgia racing started happening. I thought seeing these old cars run was the coolest thing since Italian ices. I raced in the street classes of the NDRA a few times and had lots of fun doing it.

I finally bought my first real racecar in 1990. A slingshot dragster which I ran in Supercomp for about 3 years. It was at this time that I figured I needed a nickname for racing, and I added the Professor part of my name. I had lots of fun running SC and met some super people. I still have many friends from this class. I traveled to National Events as far away as Minnesota, and I learned a lot during this time. But, I came to realize that I really wanted to race in a heads up class.

Some people may get mad at me for saying this, but it’s just the way I see it. If the guy who gets to the finish line first, doesn’t win, then it wasn’t really a race.

I overspent to run Supercomp, and had exhausted my funds; a pit which a lot of racers fall into. I stopped racing for a few years and started saving.

I had met Cole Coonce before either of us was known much to the racing world. I was going to Spanish class during the summer for my job (an elementary school teacher) when I met his girlfriend who was attending the same class. At the time I was racing my ’57 Ford in the NDRA, and she said that her boyfriend was big on drag racing (which she said with disgust!). I met Cole and liked him right away. Like me, he was a rock-and-roller and a drag nut. We became friends, and he even came out and crewed for me during my Supercomp racing. I didn’t see him much for a few years after that.

During the next few years Cole would start writing for Super Stock and Drag Illustrated as well as Full Throttle News. Who knew that he had so much talent, and would become the premiere journalist for the nostalgia crowd! During the time when I wasn’t racing I would go out to the nostalgia drags to spectate, and I kept running into him. He repeatedly told me that I should bring my car out and race it with these guys, but I just didn’t have the funds to do it. In the end, Cole was a major influence in my decision to put VooDoo together.

After 4 years of putting dough away and getting back on level ground, I was ready to go racing again. I thought I would build a nostalgia A Fueler, and set out collecting parts. I thought I would just update my dragster, switch engines, and be ready to stage. But, when I took the frame to have it updated for the faster class, I found out that too much work was involved to bring it up to current specs.

I sold the car and ordered a brand new one from Dave Tuttle. The truth is; I picked Dave because he was close to home and had bugged me for many years to have him build me a new car. As it turned out, by dumb luck, this was an excellent decision. I can’t over emphasize the quality, which goes into one of Dave’s cars, or the masterful skill he possesses. Dave is a racer himself and fully understands what is needed to make one of these cars work. His building skills are incredible. The sheet metal work on my car is flawless, and it is probably the best looking car running in front engine fuel today (of course I'm prejudiced)! The best part is that when Dave builds you a car he stands behind everything he does, and enjoys seeing the car run well. He’s a builder you can count on.

During construction of the car, it appeared for a while as if there would be no more A fuel class. The organization had lost the Carburetor Shop sponsorship of the program, and GoodGuys stated that they would never recognize this class. So rather then go back to racing index’s I decided to go Top Fuel racing.

By now I had become pretty savvy about tuning a racecar, but I didn’t really know too much about running Nitro. It’s not a little different; it’s a world apart from running a gas or alcohol car. I asked a lot of people for input about how to race one of these cars, but through serendipitous events I found just the right people to get me started.

Part 2- The Voodoo era begins

Before I go any further, I want to introduce a key figure in my world. I met Gary Kortz while racing Supercomp. He knew a lot more about racing than I did, and came to my aid when I really needed help. He is the kind of guy who will give you the shirt off his back, and really impressed me with his attitude towards racing. Unlike many people I meet, he maintains the proper perspective towards racing: this is all about having fun. Far too many racers become austere in their outlook towards this sport. If it wasn’t fun, I wouldn’t be here, and Gary understands that.

Neither of us is quite sure when it happened, but we became fast friends, and he remains the primary member of my crew. He is also a fierce competitor in his own right, and currently campaigns a Cifca funny car The Gold Coast Raider. Gary had worked on the Good Bad and Ugly Top Fueler in the ’70’s and also for John Force for a while early in his career. He knew quite a bit about what was involved in running a Fueler, and taught me what to expect.

Gary had a lot of general knowledge about tuning a Fueler, but the man who knew the scripture by heart was Mike Demarest. I had met Mike while working for Jacobs ignitions in 1989. He had helped me briefly when I first assembled my Supercomp engine, but I hadn’t seen him in about 10 years. I ran into him at the Long Beach swap meet. I was carrying a blower manifold I had just bought for a 392 and we started talking about what it was for. He offered to help me get the project off the ground, and I was smart enough to take advantage of his offer. At the time I didn’t realize just how much he knew, or how good he is at this. There are a lot of fuel tuners who started when he did (1950’s) who have gone on to make a lot of cash in the NHRA ranks. Then there are a lot who shouldn’t have been around nitro in the first place. Then there are the very few like Mike.

Here is a guy who can watch a car go down the track and instantly know what was wrong and right about the tune-up. He understands the whole relationships of tire, to clutch, to engine, and has done this enough to put a safe and fast tune-up on the car right away. He has contributed to the efforts of the fastest car currently on the circuit, Champion Speed Shop. Was one of the original Ground Shakers, and Partnered with Bill Schultz to form Demarest and Schultz Engine Works. Together they were responsible for the original Over The Hill Gang dragster (4 national event wins in ’79), the Super Shops Roadster (which set records which took 12 years to be surpassed), and were responsible for various other National records since 1962.

Everything I know about tuning a fuel engine I learned from Mike. From my very first licensing passes the car ran well. Realize that my first engine was built out of swap meet parts with 35-year-old pistons, camshaft, oil pump and a stock block and crank. The car was in the low 7’s from the first pass, and got progressively faster each license pass. By the time I had my final license pass I was running 6.87! A great number from this very outdated combination. Mike said from the outset that the fastest he thought this stuff would go was 6.50’s. He tuned the car down to 6.64 by the cars fourth full pass!

About this time he told me that he had taught me what I needed to know, and he stepped aside. He still confers on the phone with me, and he’s my first place to go with any questions.

The next two outings with this car were less than impressive. It stalled on the burnout twice (turned out to be a faulty mag) and then cracked the supercharger when some contamination got into the fuel and plugged some nozzles.

At the Hot Rod Reunion last year I thought I had a pretty mild tune-up on the car, but it really liked the new supercharger more than the old one. I went 6.55 at 230 MPH. Top speed of the meet at that point. But, the old stock block let go in the lights and became scrap iron. When the engine came apart, covered with oil, I couldn’t see where I was going. I brushed the wall, and did a little damage to the car. I’ve since put in a Donovan aluminum mill, and I’ve only had two passes on it since. It seems to want a lot more fuel and ignition lead than the iron block did, and I expect to be running fast with it very soon.

I don’t have the budget to run with the very fastest cars yet, but I’m definitely working toward it. I’ve got a small crew at this point, which consists of Gary Kortz, Jim Cooley, and Mark Weller.

Jim was a junior fuel racer back in the sixties, who took a 30 years vacation from racing. He owns his own alcohol dragster which he runs in ET events, but he’s always there when I need help with this car.

I met Mark one year while spectating at Bakersfield. He saw my name on my jacket, and told me that he had watched me run in Supercomp. I was pretty noticeable, because I had the only slingshot in the field. Mark is an anesthesiologist, and that keeps him pretty busy. But, whenever he has the time available he’s there to work on the car with the rest of us. He’s constructed some incredible scratch built models, which reside in the NHRA museum. He also built a beautiful roadster, which you will see parked in my pit space often. Between the two of us we probably have more postgraduate training than the rest of the field combined.

In the coming year I feel sure that 6.20 ET's are in our future, and maybe better than that. If I had the budget to run the car more often, I would be running at the front of the pack. Realize that VooDoo has only 8 full passes to date!

The guys I am racing against are the same ones I read about in magazines when I was 12 years old in my NY apartment. If somebody had told me that one-day I would be racing with them, I would have said "No way!" But life is strange, and here I am. Even though I am definitely the new kid on the block, the other competitors have been very warm, and welcomed me into the class. I have a lot of respect for them, and there is plenty of talent at all these races.

So, here we are, 2001 season ahead of us. I think things are just getting better and better, and this season should be great!

HISTORY PART 2

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